Wednesday, 11 June 2014

A new species of Burrowing Sea Anemone from the Ross Ice Shelf.

Burrowing Sea Anemones (Edwardsiidae) are small, worm-like Cnidarians that live largely within a substrate with only their tentacles and mouthparts exposed. Many species live in coastal settings such as lagoons or estuaries where salinity levels may fluctuate strongly, or may be consistently above or below normal sea levels. Others are found in a variety of other extreme environments, including the deepest marine trenches.

The new species is placed in the genus Edwardsiella, which has until now contained only species fro coastal environments, and is given the specific name andrillae, after the Antarctic Drilling program (AnDrill). Edwardsiella andrillae is a 16-20 mm Burrowing Sea Anemone that lives in burrows on the underside of the Ross Ice Shelf. The species was initially discovered by cameras inserted through drill-holes in the ice-sheet in oder to study the ecology of the underside of the ice.

(A) Close up of wild specimens of Edwardsiella andrillae. (B) Colony of Edwardsiella andrillae on the underside of the Ross Ice Shelf. (C) Entire animal. Daly et al. (2013).

Most members of the genus Edwardsiella are restricted to the northern hemisphere, where they live in burrows in sand, algal mats of other soft substrates in estuaries and other coastal settings in temperate climates. One other species in known from the southern Hemisphere, Edwardsiella ignota, which lives on the coast of Chile. Exactly how Edwardsiella andrillae excavates a burrow in a hard icy substrate is far from clear.

While instantly familiar and biologically simple, Jellyfish (Scyphozoa) are still in many ways poorly understood, with frequently poorly understood life-cycles and population structures, leading to unexpected shifts in population and sudden blooms of large numbers of Jellyfish, which can impact on commercial...

Siphonophores are colonial Hydrozoans (Cnidarians related to Corals and Jellyfish) which live as members of the marine plankton (organisms that drift in ocean currents). Some species superficially resemble Jellyfish, but their internal structure is quite different, with each Jelly being a colony of hundreds or thousands of connected individuals called zooids. These zooids are not typically identical, with specialist feeding...

About Me

Studied Palaeobiology & Evolution at the University of Portsmouth, Geosciences via the Open University & Ecology and Conservation at Christchurch University, Canterbury.
Have worked in wildlife based tourism, mineral exploration, development, conservation, education & environmental chemistry. Occasionally write articles for papers and magazines.

This Blog would be impossible without the work of countless scientists (and others) throughout the world. Where possible I do my best to credit them, but there will always be many more who remain unmentioned; this does not imply I am ungrateful for their contributions. Any errors or inaccuracies are, of course, my own.